


The Tale of Madame Benne

by lulla_lunekjaer



Category: Fairy Tales & Related Fandoms, The Ever Afters Series - Shelby Bach
Genre: Blood, F/F, F/M, Gratuitious Use of Commas, I don't know what to tag this, Multi, Polyamory, Pre-Canon, The First Triumvirate, in both senses of the word lol, just a bit though, the canon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-09
Updated: 2016-06-30
Packaged: 2018-06-01 05:44:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,227
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6503305
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lulla_lunekjaer/pseuds/lulla_lunekjaer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Madame Benne didn’t like to enchant books, but they say she did it once as a favor.<br/>They’re wrong.<br/>She did it twice, and somewhere, there is a book.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Tale of Benne

**Author's Note:**

> this started with me rambling to Rain about failed tales and tales in general while betaing one of her fics and now it's my longest fic ever

Madame Benne didn’t like to enchant books, but they say she did it once as a favor.  
They’re wrong.  
She did it twice, and somewhere, there is a book.

The buildings that house Ever After School were built long ago, before the reaches of human or Character memory. Even the newest chapters have torch-lit corridors upon flowery atriums upon grim dungeons, and once upon a time, a young girl hid something there.

It wasn’t hard. Even erratic magic follows some rules. For example, that one door that pops up for precisely half an hour about every two months actually corresponds to the length of a day on Mercury, and there’s that one passageway everyone always means to explore but never does, because it only appears when you’re far too busy with other things to bother with it.

The girl knew. She was clever. She returned to what would one day be Ever After School from the shop late at night, and began to mark when she saw it. The room in question could only be found from midnight to three am on the seventh and thirteenth full moons of the year and inside were shelves and shelves and shelves, all waiting.

 

The girl grew up, moved to France, fell in love. The people there worshipped her, called her Madame, paid her handsomely for a table that would always bear food, a chair that would never tip its occupant out, charms against the plague and ague, a cloak that never let in the cold, even in the depths of midwinter.

A boy came into her shop on the coldest day of the year. He called himself Rikard. She could not help but stare, because he didn’t. Most people couldn’t keep their eyes off her strange veils and clothes that covered almost every inch of skin. He looked through the heavy gauzes straight to her eyes and kept her gaze.

They were calling a meeting of people like them. The ones who lived in the old stories, who didn’t huddle in the dark when danger came a-knocking. They wanted her to come.

Maybe, she said. She was just an inventor, she told him. No one special. She showed him the Table of Plenty, the Harp (who refused to sing for him), offered him scones. There was a moment when her veils parted and her skin flashed gold in the darkened room, but he had been examining a curious mirror on the other side of the room and hadn’t seen.

He smiled wide and bowed when he left, telling her he’d love to see more of her, even if she didn’t go to the meeting.

She went to the meeting.

 

Rikard was there, as well as an old woman with long crooked fingers, a boy with ashes streaked across his face, a man with a peg leg, a few unremarkable characters, and a girl in a long red cloak, her arm curled around a younger girl with a vicious scar across her face.

They were all human, she thought, magic, yes, but human. She stood at the edge of the light, uncertain whether the night hid what her veils could not or if the full moon revealed her to be what they were not.

When she scuffed her foot against a particularly crunchy leaf, the girl in the red cloak looked up, then waved her over. She smiled, and held up her gloved hands, but the girl only waved more intensely. She sat next to the scarred girl, on the opposite side of the girl in the cloak from Rikard, who smiled again, and she felt her cheeks redden from gold to bronze.

Maerwynne, the girl in the cloak, wanted to form a group. A council of sorts. They were going to collect the old Tales, the new ones, the ones that happened over and over again, the ones seen only once every hundred years. That way, they said, they would know what to do if it happened to them. Maerwynne’s arm tightened around the scarred girl as she talked.

She looked at her, huddled deep under the arm of who she assumed was her sister, and the girl realized that before she was scarred, she would have been a great beauty. It cut between her opposite eyebrow and jaw like lightning bringing a tree into sharp focus.

She was busy studying her eyes, pale green as the spring, when the scarred girl spoke.

“There should be a book.”

Maerwynne looked at her, eyes ablaze. “I know a traveling monk. He could write it out, keep a record of all the Tales, make copies of the common ones and send them around.”

The boy with the ash-streaked face scowled and said something in German. The girl didn’t know German, but she spoke five other languages besides French and wondered how much of the conversation any of the others understood.

Rikard quickly answered in the same language, assuring him of something.

The old woman with crooked fingers spoke, her French strangely accented. “If it is to be a book, then it must be a magic book. One that will record the stories without need of any such _monk_."

“Right. That’s what she’s here for.” Rikard nodded towards the girl. “Meet the world’s foremost magical inventor. They call her Madame Benne.”

The girl’s face went bronze again, but this time with anger. “If you’ve heard all that, surely you’ve heard my rules as well. No necromancy, no love spells, and no books.”

Maerwynne tried, “But surely-”

“No.”

The man with the peg leg spoke at last.

“Books are human, through and through. They do not like enchantments, not even clever ones like the one on your bag and harp,” he said, pointing at them, “It is not only hard, but wrong, to enchant them.”

“That can’t be right.” Maerwynne’s brow was furrowed. “Books are the closest things we have to magic.”

“Equal but opposite,” the man continued, “Books are human magic. They do not like Fey or magician magic. Character magic. Magic magic.”

“But if anyone could do it, surely it would be the greatest magician in the world!” Rikard turned towards her. “Please?”

“No,” she said. She didn’t know when the meeting ended. She left then and there.

 

The girl in the red cloak came by her shop the next day, Rikard in tow. They were holding hands and giggling, and right before they came in, she leaned up and kissed him. The girl felt her mouth turn into a sneer.

Maerwynne opened her mouth and inhaled, ready to deliver a piercing argument, but the girl got there first.

“What do you want?”

“To discuss last night, maybe consider that one thing?” Her voice was calming, like a warm blanket, but Benne was having none of it.

“I told you, I’m not having anything to do with enchanting books. They don’t deserve it.”

Maerwynne looked like the girl had slapped her across the face, and when she spoke, it was with righteous fury. “You have never met these people. Who are you to pass judgement on them, to say what they deserve and don’t? A book like this could have saved my sisters’ lives. Who are you to-”

“I meant," she said in a tone that indicated she would take no such nonsense, “the books don’t deserve it.” Only Rikard noticed that outside, the wind had picked up and the sky had darkened. “I’m sorry, but I simply refuse to enchant books. I also refuse to associate with people who flirt with helpless shopgirls and then go home to another’s bed.”

Both Rikard and Maerwynne blanched at that.

“No, we’re not- it’s-”

“You misunderstand-”

“I’m not her-”

She cut through their protesting like a knife. “I think you’d better go.”

 

They didn’t come back the next day, or the day after that. Melodie said good riddance, but the girl felt something. Like the feeling of having a word just on the tip of your tongue, insubstantial, something you can almost reach but just when you get there, it dissolves into smoke.

She lay in bed and wondered at the exact nature of the relationship between them, a girl that kisses a boy then denies that they’re married. And outside of a shop? Engaged at the very least. The Franks were more forgiving than some, but not that forgiving. Everyone asked why she herself wasn’t married yet. She told some of them that no one had ever asked her and she was doomed to be an old maid, complete with long lamenting sigh. Some of them, young girls, mostly, learned that as long as she wasn’t married she could still work. “Never give up your agency,” she told them. She didn’t know if they ever listened. The best was when the old dowagers came in and asked her, and she told them that she had been tragically widowed at the age of fourteen and forced to cross the country on foot to come here and live with a cousin, but that the cousin couldn’t support her as well as his own family and she was tragically forced to work all day. “Oh, how I miss my husband!” She would tell them, “He was so good to me. If only I had known what a catch I had!” He must have been very kind, they said, if she was still wearing mourning for him after all this time. “Oh, yes,” she would say, picking at the edge of her veils and smiling shyly, “he was all that, and more,” The old women would give her a knowing look, and then buy the most expensive thing in the shop. When they left she would go in the back and laugh until the bell over the shop rang again and she had to pull herself back together.

 

Maerwynne came back the next day after that. She approached the counter in the back hesitantly, looking first at a pair of enchanted knitting needles, then a silver spoon, both engraved with Benne’s symbol: the magic harp.

“I’m sorry I asked you to compromise your principles. It was unfair of me and I should have left it be after you refused.” She stared at Maerwynne for a second, unsure of what to say back.

“I’m sorry I can’t help you. You seem nice enough, even if you do go around kissing people that can’t help but flirt with others.”

She rolled her eyes. “Oh, he can help it, all right. He just doesn’t. He says there’s this legend, that when the world was made, people had more than one head, and two or three bodies, and four arms, but the gods got scared that they were too powerful, and split them apart with lightning, and ever since then we’ve been looking for our other parts. It’s kind of silly, but it’s nice, I guess. Anyway, he says he’ll never find his other parts if he doesn’t look for them.”

She smiled at Maerwynne. “I like it.”

Maerwynne smiled back at her. “I do, too.”

Benne had never seen eyes that green. It was like drowning, but nicer.

“Maybe you could come to our next meeting, and we could think about some other possibilities for people like us?”

“Oh.” _People like us? People like you,_ she thought. “Um, yeah. I’d like that.”

“It’s full moons, and, honestly, I think Rikard would like it as well.” When Benne reached out to clasp her hands with Maerwynne’s, a small strip of skin was left uncovered between her small delicate-work gloves and her sleeve. The tip of Maerwynne’s finger brushed against it, and a small spark jumped between them. She quickly pulled her hand back and tugged down her sleeve.

“Uh, yeah. I’ll be there.”

Maerwynne smiled, and Benne’s world was lit up from the outside in.

 

She went to the next meeting, and the next. She appreciated their full moon schedule more and more as the days got lighter and lighter, and her veils heavier and heavier. Full moon still means midnight. When she could, she pulled clouds over the moon, but not often enough that anyone would become suspicious.

Their plans for Tale education got nowhere, not without books, and she still refused to enchant them.

“Books are human,” she said, and the old woman with crooked fingers would sniff, and Maerwynne would glare at her, and Benne would stand her ground while Rikard smoothed things over.

Maerwynne and Rikard kissed again. After the meeting, when Benne stayed back to make sure the fire was completely dead. When she exited the clearing, there they were.

They didn’t notice her. She slipped away, swallowed up by the darkness.


	2. The Tale of the Twelve Dancing Red Riding Hoods

The girl with the scar was named Hildur. 

Once upon a time, she had been the youngest princess of a far-away kingdom. Every night, she and her sisters would descend to the Seelie Court through trees of gold and diamonds, and every night she would dance her shoes to ribbons among the Fey. Then, one night, a soldier in a cloak of invisibility followed them, spied on them, rode to the ballroom in Hildur’s own boat, and reported back to their father. She had warned them, but her eldest sister had dismissed her at every turn. She woke up the next day in her own bed, shoes in perfect condition. She never danced again.

The soldier married her eldest sister, and at their wedding was a witch who greeted the soldier like an old auntie. She took the cloak of invisibility back from him, and, turning it inside out three times, gave it to the next-eldest sister. 

“Now, dear,” she told the next-eldest sister, “You must come visit me sometime. I live in a little cottage in the woods, you see, and the journey is long.”

“But isn’t it dangerous?” Hildur asked.

“No, no,” the old woman brushed off Hildur’s concerns, “It’s quite safe if you just stay on the path!”

Hildur wondered how a cloak which had been invisible had turned such a bright red color.

The next-eldest sister went to go visit the old woman in the woods with a loaf of bread and never came back. The only thing left of her when the search party found her was the cloak. They never found out if it was wet from the creek nearby or the blood of the next-eldest sister.

The third sister got the cloak next. A little more was found of her - an arm, the royal ring on her hand stained with blood. 

The old woman came to their funerals. Each sister took the cloak, each vowed to visit the woman who was so kind to them in their grief, who told them that they had but to stay on the path, and none of them returned the same.

The fourth sister returned from her trip - third time’s the charm, they said - but with only one eye and without two of the fingers of her left hand. However much they tried, they could never get the color of the glass eye to match the real one.  The fourth sister wore dresses with wide sleeves for the rest of her life.

“Does it look darker to you?” Hildur asked the eighth sister, who shrugged.

“Red is red,” she said, although she knew it had been at least two shades lighter when it was given to the second sister.

The fifth sister stole the cloak from the fourth and went out in the dead of night to visit the old woman. She too returned, but with only one and a half legs and nine fingers. Disgusted by the cloak, she tried to give it back to the fourth sister, but she would not take it. The sixth sister swore that she would never take it, would never visit the old woman, but she did, she did. She did, and she never returned. The cloak was found at the bottom of a cliff, and for once, the sixth sister’s body was below it. 

Each sister swore she wouldn’t make the same mistakes as the others, she would stick to the path, she would be back before dark, she wouldn’t speak to strangers. Each sister swore, but when the cloak fell to her, she took it and went. Hildur asked the sixth sister about it, once, but all she said was that she had to go, she was meant to go. Hildur hadn’t understood.

The seventh sister locked herself in a dungeon. Better here, she said, then out there in the woods. A guard brought her the cloak, and the next morning, she was gone. When they found her, a key was clutched in her hand, several feet away from her severed legs. 

“Be careful not to stray from the path, now,” the old woman said at her funeral. It was closed-casket. 

The kingdom was called “red,” now, and it was known for its beautiful and dying princesses, sisters of the queen whose husband had been a common soldier from a country defeated by the queen’s late father. They were cursed, someone said. The king and queen knew better than to lock her sisters in their room, fearing the return of the Seelie Court to their dreaming hours, but there was nothing else to do. The eighth sister climbed out of the window and down the side of the tower where they lived. She returned the best out of all of them, they thought, with only a black eye and a few scratches. She said a woodsman had come along and scared off the beast, but nothing more about him. They didn’t know the full extent of the damages until nine months later, when Hildur watched as her nephew was welcomed into the world. He was quickly given to a maid whose own child had died a few days after being born, and the eighth sister was sent to a convent. 

The ninth sister said she wouldn’t have any of this and ripped the cloak to shreds with her knife. She spent the entire night not dancing, but sewing it back together until it was as good as new. She could not, would not stop. When they found her, only three feet off the path, her hands were shredded to ribbons and blood dripped down her perfect face like a piece of thread. 

The tenth sister took up the cloak reluctantly, tucking a dagger into her basket of bread for the old woman. “It was like I was compelled by some evil spell,” she told Hildur afterwards. “The devil had control of my hands and a beast came for me. I managed to stab it in the eye, though.” The tenth sister replaced her broken and infected arm and leg with ones made of wood and limped for the rest of her life.

The eleventh sister was Maerwynne. She refused to touch the cloak, originally crimson, now a deep garnet color, so Hildur did. What was this thing that had devoured so many of her sisters? Had they strayed from the path? Had they made it to the old woman’s house? 

It whispered to her, in the middle of the night. 

You could avenge them, it said, you could finally find out what killed them. You don’t have to wait on your sister for your turn. You could take it right now, go, go.

So she went. Little Hildur in the red cloak with the basket of goodies. 

She walked through the woods, sunlight streaming through the branches, humming as she skipped along. She was almost there - just another hill, the old woman had said, and there I’ll be - when she saw the flowers. 

Look, whispered the cloak, look, how blue they are! How well they go with your eyes! How much the old woman will like them! 

No, she thought, I must stay on the path, and went over the hill. The old woman was surprised to see her there. 

“I had so given up on a visit from one of you girls! Tell me, how is your sister, Maerwynne, is it? Is she well?” Hildur nodded, something about the old woman seeming ever-so-slightly off from the other times they had met. They sat for many an hour, pleasantly discussing court gossip over tea and treats, but something still bothered Hildur. 

Finally, she looked out the window, where the sun was beginning her descent through the sky.

“I really must be going,” she said, rising from the seat by the fire.

“Oh, if you really must,” the old woman said, as she followed Hildur to the door. “Make sure to tell your sister to visit me, hmmm?”

“Oh, of course!” She said, and started on the path. The old woman followed her out of the house, curving around to the side, but all the while Hildur could feel eyes on her. Someone - something - was watching as she crossed a field, climbed a hill - wait, were those flowers there before?

Flowers, whispered the cloak, eyes. Pretty eyes, pretty flowers. You’re almost home, nothing can hurt you now. 

Well, Hildur thought, just a few flowers surely couldn’t hurt.

She leaned over, having set just one foot off the path, and picked just one flower when everything happened at once. 

From the woods, a wolf sprang at her, and from the direction of the castle, Maerwynne sprang at the wolf. It reached her just as she turned to look at it and one of it’s claws raked against her face, pushing her to the ground. Grabbing the cloak from Hildur’s back, Maerwynne threw it on the wolf’s good side, the other eye having been stabbed by the tenth sister. Completely blinded, even if just for a few seconds, Maerwynne was able to stab it in several places with a sword stolen from the castle armory. Hildur didn’t know what happened next, but she remembered being carried back to the castle by Maerwynne, blood streaming down her face, bandages and poultices being applied, seeing the corpse of the wolf, which all the remaining sisters were able to identify as the one which had attacked them, and Maerwynne wearing the cloak. 

Does it whisper to you, she asked.

No, Maerwynne said, no, not anymore. 


	3. The Tale of Reglindis

The Canon was not the only thing that met in the forest on full moon nights. The people in nearby towns whispered of witches and monsters, the Fair Folk and others, ones so Fair that to even whisper of them could bring misfortune on your home.

Benne wasn’t scared of them. She was part Fey, she could see through their tricks and work her own magic on them. There was always calling down lightning to scare the particularly persistent. She didn’t do it very often.

Once, when she was still learning the full extent of her powers, she had called lightning to her and let it dance across her palms and in her hair, lighting up the world around her. This was when she was younger, and more foolish, and didn’t wear as many veils. An old man had seen her and cried out that she was possessed by devils, startling Benne. The lightning flowed down her outstretched hands and into the old man, who collapsed. The lightning, once so beautiful, was an instrument of death nonetheless, and Benne hated it. She left the town and never went back.

One of the things the people whispered about were witches. Benne hadn’t met any of them, but she knew they were there. They probably knew she was there too. Witches are a highly suspicious lot, and as such, there is always at least one in their coven who has developed her sense of magic beyond the rest. These witches acted as dogs, sensing magic and telling the others what kind it was, where it came from, what motives it had. They had probably sensed Benne the moment she entered the town. It’s very hard to hide Fey and mermaid blood, not to mention Melodie or any of the materials and projects she had brought with her.

It really wasn’t a surprise when they approached her in the woods one night. One of them introduced herself as Eilika, and asked her to meet her coven. Benne, who probably thought too much of her magic for someone who didn’t use it very often, agreed.

This particular coven belonged to the Thorn-apple clan, and their leader was called Reglindis. They had a fire going in their clearing, and although the witches huddled around it were all ugly, they all looked very pleased to be there, and even happier once they saw Benne.

Reglindis invited her to sit at their fire, to share in their mead. Benne accepted the former but refused the latter.

You never know what might be in mead brewed by witches in a cauldron over a roaring fire in a clearing in the middle of the woods near a town that lost children to that self-same woods more than once a year. Sure, the mother would cry and they would send out search parties for a week, maybe two weeks if the child’s father was wealthy or influential, but nine times out of ten, the child was simply gone.

Eilika poured her some anyway. Benne held it, watching as golden steam rose from the goblet, which appeared to be made of the bone of an unknown creature. Whatever it had been, it had to have been enormous to have had such a cup carved from its rib.

Reglindis drank. The rest of the witches joined her, until Benne was the only one with a full cup. Eilika busied herself with refilling all of their goblets while their matriarch leaned forward and spoke to Benne.

“We know about the Book,” Reglindis told her, “and we know that you have refused to make it.”

Benne very much wished she could drink the mead now, as it would give her something to do besides stare at it, but even if she had wanted to, her veils were in the way.

“Books are human, yes, but you do not see what I see. We have a soothsayer amongst us,” she pointed to a very old witch with no hair huddled in a scarf at the edge of the circle, “and she has seen what this Book will do for us. For you. For the world.”

The mead, which seemed never to stop steaming, was possibly the most fascinating thing Benne had seen in weeks.

“You can’t know that the future she saw will come to pass.” The voice seemed to come from somewhere else. It couldn’t possibly be Benne’s. No.

“No, we can’t.” Reglindis stared at Benne until their eyes met over the fire. “But the future she has painted for us is glorious.” She stood, and Benne realized that the matriarch of the Thorn-apple clan had only one leg of flesh. The other, which she was now offering to Benne, was made of wood.

“Do you see this? My mother was a witch of the Gingerbread clan. When I was six years old, she let two children into our cottage. She had never heard the stories, you see. They had eaten our front gate, so she cast a spell on them. They had to work for her until they had paid off the gate. Every day, when they were done working, we would play together until we fell down.

I don’t know when my mother decided she would eat the boy instead, but the girl was always going to be my plaything. My friend. Right up to the moment she pushed my mother into her own cauldron. Do you have any idea how quickly a house made of sugar can burn?” Reglindis ripped off her cloak, revealing an arm covered in scar tissue. “Another witch who lived nearby saw the flames. She had to take my leg off, it was too far gone. She replaced it with one made of Thorn-apple wood. Unlike those made of metal, it grew up with me.”

A pattern of flowers was etched into the wood. Benne couldn’t quite tell what flowers they were, but they smelled heavenly. Or maybe that was Reglindis, who was leaning over her.

“It’s said,” she whispered to Benne, “that the thorn-apple tree cures heartbreak. Who are you in love with, girl?”

The steam curled around Benne’s hand, gold on black on gold. It twined with the purple smoke of the fire, spiraling up into the air. Her hand seemed to be very far away. She didn’t answer.

“You’re quite under its spell now, you may as well tell me.” It seemed to Benne that a haze had lifted, even as the clouds thickened above the clearing. She stood, dropping the goblet of mead.

“I don’t fall under spells. I create them. I know them.” She was wrong, of course. Magical and human blood make for an interesting mix of magical potential, and most of what Benne had worked with was magicianship and mermaid magic, not sorcery or witchcraft. However, as previously noted, Benne thought rather too much of the magic she did have, especially for someone who scorned it for better things so much of the time.

Reglindis looked deep into her eyes. “Oh, child. You don’t have to pretend with me. With any of us. We know what you are, who you are. Take off the veils, and I will show you just how well I know you.”

The golden mist teased at the edges of her veil, and Benne suddenly thought that yes, taking off the veil might be a good idea. Yes.

She took off the veil. The fire grew bigger, brighter, reflected off of her gold skin. She was a fire, veils of smoke ripped away, burning as much now as she had stifled herself before. She was a goddess, she was brilliance, she was light. She was a pair of lips upon her own, two bodies meeting under the light of the moon.

Reglindis pulled back from the kiss, gasping. Witches were cursed with ugliness, yes, but in that moment, nothing could be more beautiful. Benne had her life before her, her magic, herself. She felt Reglindis’s eyelashes brush her temple as she whispered into Benne’s ear. “See, was that so hard, now?”

She could taste the mead now. It was honey-like and sweet, but the aftertaste proved it a bitter draught.

“You’re like me,” Reglindis murmured. “You’re magic.” She pulled back and retreated to her seat on the other side of the fire. “You could share the magic.”

Eilika refilled her spilled goblet.

“Make the Book, Benne. Record their stories - and ours. No witch child will have to suffer how I have suffered because her mother didn’t know the consequences of letting a Hansel and a Gretel into her gingerbread house. No princess will have to die because she had never heard of a Little Red Riding Hood, like your friends. Make the Book, and share our stories.”

Benne considered the mead in her goblet. It had stopped giving off the golden steam and instead sat there, reflecting her own golden face. She looked at Reglindis, and maybe there was fire in her eyes and maybe it was just reflected and maybe it was something more. 

“I’ll do it,” Benne promised, “I’ll make the Book of Tales.” She drank.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is shorter than the others, but I wanted to get something out and this seemed like a good place for it.


End file.
